Space, The Final Frontier For Hoaxes! Space, la dernière frontière pour les canulars!

Watchman comment: I highly recommend watching the old movie Andromeda Strain (not the newer version) that was produced in the early 1970s. The special effects at the beginning and during the movie are pretty cool for that period of time. The movie is about a virus, Andromeda Strain,  brought to Earth from outer space by a secret government project called “Project Scoop” and a “Wild Fire” is declared because the outer space germ is killing people. You will recall that back in the 1960s I believe hundreds if not thousands of sheep were killed by the U.S. military or government in a bio-war accident. Some people believe Andromeda Strain is the story of that bio-war accident.

By Jon Rappoport

That may sound like a misguided question. But let's look at Tom DeLonge's company, currently acting as a conduit for new UFO revelations.

DeLonge, a famous musician (Blink-182, Angels and Airwaves) has surrounded himself with high-level spooks from the CIA and the military, in his new venture, To the Stars Academy.

One of his lead collaborators is Luis Elizondo, who was the Pentagon chief of a secret program (2007-2012) to study and explore UFO activity. Elizondo is now the point man for media, explaining the breaking news about a 2004 US military sighting of a UFO, and subsequent failed attempts to analyze materials from UFOs. He's also hinting that alien UFOs are a potential threat to our safety, a threat we can't ignore.  

Every major press outlet in the world, starting with the NY Times, is covering this story.

Who are the players on De Longe's team? Buckle up. The following quotes are from the Academy's site:

Jim Semivan---"Mr. Semivan retired from the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations after 25 years as an operations officer, both overseas and domestically."

Hal Puthoff---"Dr. Puthoff's professional background spans more than five decades of research at General Electric, Sperry, the National Security Agency (NSA), Stanford University and SRI International. Dr. Puthoff regularly advises NASA, the Department of Defense and intelligence communities..."

Luis Elizondo---"Luis Elizondo is a career intelligence officer whose experience includes working with the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, the National Counterintelligence Executive, and the Director of National Intelligence. As a former Special Agent In-Charge, Luis conducted and supervised highly sensitive espionage and terrorism investigations around the world. As an intelligence Case Officer, he ran clandestine source operations throughout Latin America and the Middle East."

Chris Mellon---"He served 20 years in the federal government, including as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and Bush Administrations."

Paul Rapp---"His past honors include a Certificate of Commendation from the Central Intelligence Agency for 'significant contributions to the mission of the Office of Research and Development'." (Note: This office, ORD, was where the CIA's MKULTRA mind control program secretly landed, in 1962, after it purportedly ended.)

Norm Kahn---"Dr. Kahn had over a 30-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency..."

Getting the picture?

That's quite a roll call of military and intelligence insiders. Did DeLonge recruit them, or did they covertly recruit him, viewing him as a sincere, but rather clueless front man they could use for their own purposes?

But let's go one layer deeper with a few of these names on Tom DeLonge's team at the To the Stars Academy.

Dr. Norm Kahn's career with the CIA "culminat[ed] in his development and direction of the Intelligence Community's Counter-Biological Weapons Program."

Dr. Rapp "is a Professor of Military and Emergency Medicine at the Uniformed Services University."

Dr. Garry Nolan, another Academy advisor, "is the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine...He holds a B.S. in genetics from Cornell University, a Ph.D. in genetics from Stanford University."

Luis Elizondo's "academic background includes Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology, with research experience in tropical diseases."

And finally, another Academy team member, Dr. Adele Gilpin, "is a scientist with biomedical academic and research experience as well as an active, licensed, attorney."

Why are all these medical people on board, along with intelligence and military players? Microbiology, parasitology, immunology, genetics, biological weapons? What do these fields have to do with UFOs?

It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to come up with a few answers. Military and intelligence and microbiological people, working together on UFO scenarios, could easily concoct "threat assessments" focusing on "unique viruses coming to Earth from space." Via drift, or even through "aliens" visiting from afar.

I say "threat assessments," because that is how these people think and how they spin.

Don't be too surprised if you hear language like this emerge:
 

"We must prepare for all eventualities. After all, if we aren't alone in the universe, we could be subject to life forms at the micro level we aren't ready for, and to which we have no natural immunity..."

When your professional background is inventing enemies, there are no limits to the scenarios you'll dream up.

Suppose we soon hear this: "Dr. X has suggested the need for extensive research on possible vaccines against a whole range of unknown viral species from outer space..."

The CEO of Merck would sit up straight and grab the phone. He would want to talk to his contact at the Defense Department. He smells a new government contract.

A few big shots at the US Centers for Disease Control would huddle in a meeting. How can they get in on the action? Perhaps they can find an astrobiologist who'll claim "the possibility of human disease originating in space has been considered for many years. We've always been puzzled by the genetic makeup of certain viruses. When you consider that components involved in the formation of Earth itself could have come from distant space, these components certainly could have carried microbes with them..."

Yes, that would be a start. "And if, in fact, we have had 'visitors,' wouldn't they carry their own set of unique viruses?"

Here is an actual news story from gizmodo.com (6/22/15), "Why Scientists Have Been Scared of Space Germs for Almost 50 Years": "The 1967 Outer Space Treaty was one of the few things the U.S. and the Soviet Union managed to agree on at the height of the Cold War. Among other things, it forbid both nations from bringing space microbes back to Earth, or spreading Earth germs to other planets."

"Mostly, they [scientists] worry about single-celled, microscopic organisms, such as bacteria, some fungi, and viruses - or whatever the alien version of single-celled life looks like. We know for certain that bacteria and viruses can survive exposure to the harsh conditions of space long enough to hitch a ride to someplace more hospitable [like Earth]."

"Once they [Apollo mission personnel] returned to Earth, the crews went into immediate quarantine. First they lived in a mobile isolation unit on the aircraft carrier that recovered the landing capsule, then in an aircraft set up for isolation, and finally in a special quarantine unit at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. They stayed there for three weeks, while NASA doctors performed tests and watched for any signs of illness that might indicate an alien infection."

Perfect. The intelligence and military and medical people at DeLonge's Academy could cook up "space-virus" scenarios in a heartbeat. And with a series of press statements, they could pitch a threat assessment to the press. They already own a direct pipeline to the NY Times, which tells you they have an official green light to move forward.

We're looking at something extraordinary here. A rock musician, who's been intensely interested in UFOs for years, starts his own Academy, and he's instantly surrounded by important CIA and Pentagon and medical players. They have access to the most powerful press outlets.

They've already sold a story about military contact with a UFO, and another story about pieces from a UFO that resist all attempts at analysis. It was a remarkably easy sale. Poof. No problem.

Why not hoist up the flag on bio-threats from deep space? Carefully craft the language. Peddle that tale, too.

There are lots of payoffs. Raise the public level of fear. Always a goal when the CIA and the Pentagon are in the game. Stimulate government contracts (big money) for new medical research. Use this research as a cover for yet more (illegal) work on offensive bio-warfare programs. Hell, if they're going to go that far, why not claim the Russians have already isolated viruses from space and are developing super bio-weapons---and you have the makings of a brand new shiny Cold War.

Too wild to be believed? No, not really. When you own the basic narrative, and you have good propagandists at your disposal, the sky's the limit.

Or in this case, space.

It may be the Final Frontier of exploration, but it's also the frontier of sheer fabrication.

"Are you ready, boys? All right, let's go. Work it. Work the new virus-from-space scenario. This is a big one. All hands on deck. Sell it. Sell that jive. The New York Times is panting for more. Give it to them."

There are rumblings in Congress about resurrecting the Reagan Star Wars plan to build space weapons, which would intercept enemy nuclear missiles. Why not piggy-back a staggeringly expensive program to install "virus detectors" in space, to alert the government to "incoming microbes" from Out There---or from purported Russian "bio-attacks?"

"They'd never be able to sell that idea."

Really? Given enough time and propaganda, and given control of the basic narrative, government scientists can sell almost anything.

For decades, they've been selling the concept and practice of taking babies and toddlers, who possess almost no immune systems of their own, and injecting them with brews of toxic chemicals and microbes---known as vaccination---in order to stimulate and produce immunity in those non-existent immune systems. (Watchman comment, I am not a physician but I think Rappoport is wrong here, "who possess almost no immune systems of their own," babies get immunity from their mother's breast milk. Mother's milk actively helps newborns avoid disease in a variety of ways, breast-fed infants gain extra protection from antibodies, other proteins and immune cells in human milk.)

Back in the mid-1990s, a whole brew of hysteria was whipped up about the Hot Zone. The thesis went this way: Because of the ease of global travel, all sorts of dangerous viruses, buried for centuries in Africa and the rainforests of South America, were going to come to the West and kill untold numbers of people, who had developed no natural immunity to them. Books and articles and films about this threat appeared.

Well, the next great Hot Zone story would be Space.

And To the Stars Academy has the right people on board to promote and hustle it.

Plus, on the side, DeLonge's Academy can always use all those medical experts to analyze an alien ET body that suddenly pops up in a locker at Area 51 or at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.